1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus, an information processing system, and a display method.
2. Description of the Related Art
There is a conventional image forming device equipped with a clear toner, which is a colorless toner without a color material, in addition to toners of four colors of C (cyan), M (magenta), Y (yellow), and K (black). A toner image formed by such clear toner is fixed to a recording medium such as transfer paper on which an image is formed by the CMYK toners, and as a result, a visual effect and a tactile effect (hereinafter, referred to as a “surface effect”) are realized on a surface of the recording medium.
The surface effect to be realized differs depending on the toner image formed by the clear toner and a manner of fixing the same. There is the surface effect, which simply applies gloss, and the surface effect, which reduces the gloss. Also, the surface effect to be applied to only a part and the surface effect to provide a texture and a watermark by the clear toner are also required in addition to the surface effect applied to an entire surface. There also is a case in which surface protection is required.
It is already known to perform a total amount controlling process to limit a total amount of the toner to be used so as not to be larger than a certain threshold when the image is formed by the toners of the four colors of CYMK in general, because an image quality at the time of printing is deteriorated due to blur of a character or uneven fixing caused by scattered toner when a used amount of the toner is too large.
A maximum value of the total amount of the toner to be used is fixed in general also in a five-color image forming device obtained by adding the clear toner to the image forming device equipped with the toners of the four colors, so that total amount control for each color material becomes more severe when the number of color materials increases.
Since there is limitation of an attached amount of the clear toner in this manner, there is a case in which the clear toner is not attached as specified by a user; technology to confirm the same in advance is known.
For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2009-265405 discloses a method of switching to a printing process in which the attached amount of the toner becomes automatically larger in order to avoid deterioration in visibility due to a small attached amount of a special toner. Specifically, the technology of Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2009-265405 has a function to preview-display an effect with respect to the attached amount of the toner in advance in a test chart and allow the user to specify the same, and switch to two-pass printing in which the recording medium is allowed to pass through a fixing device twice to perform the printing when a specified effect cannot be obtained when the printing is executed. According to this, the user may confirm whether an expected attached amount of the clear toner may be realized before the printing.
However, in the technology of Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2009-265405, there is a problem that the user cannot confirm a portion of a document in which the specified effect cannot be obtained by the clear toner.
That is to say, the conventional technology has a problem that the user cannot grasp the portion in which the effect by the clear toner cannot be obtained due to lack of clear toner by an effect of the total amount controlling process of the toner in a pixel level in advance before executing a print job by a printing device. It is difficult to find a slight difference in color and the portion in which the effect by the clear toner cannot be obtained in the pixel level even when a printed matter is checked after the printing is executed.
In the technology of Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2009-265405, although the effect of the total amount control may be avoided by switching to the two-pass printing, a system configuration to pass through the fixing device twice is required in order to realize the two-pass printing, so that there is a problem that an excessive system configuration is required.
In view of the above, there is a need to provide the information processing apparatus, the information processing system, and the display method capable of allowing the user to grasp the portion in which the effect by the clear toner cannot be obtained due to the total amount controlling process of the toner in the pixel level before the printing is executed, thereby easily obtaining the printed matter with a desired effect by the clear toner while maintaining the printing quality without the excessive system configuration.